Senator Mehreen Faruqi, the Australian Greens spokesperson for Education and a former academic, reacted to this morning’s news that the University of Wollongong has accepted the John Howard-led Ramsay Centre’s funding for a degree in ‘Western Civilisation’.

She said:

“Today’s news is a blow to academic freedom in Australia.

“As a former academic, I can unequivocally say that allowing any organisation to influence curriculum, let alone one as shady as this centre, is a huge mistake.

(i) the Yat Yuen Greyhound racing track at Macau, known as the Canidrome, has been described by Grey2k as a "death camp for dogs" where tens of thousands of greyhounds have been killed over the last 50 years,

Australian Greens Senator for NSW and Animal Welfare Spokesperson, Dr Mehreen Faruqi, has held up pictures of the sheep killed on the Awasi Express in the Senate today to highlight the continued cruelty in the live export trade. While holding it, she said "This is what you are allowing. This is the animal cruelty that you aid and abet. You should be ashamed of yourselves."

This comes after the Federal Governmnet failed to table draft versions of the Moss Review into Live Exports on Monday night, as was ordered by the Senate when it passed Senator Faruqi's motion last week.

Right now we are facing a manmade disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If w e don' t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.

The world's people have spoken. Their message is clear: time is running out. They want you, the decision-makers, to act now.

The national interest test proposed by Minister Tehan is straight out of Yes Minister. The farcical proposal is a Liberal tactic of inventing a problem and then trying to solve it. Academics and researchers see right through it. The test's whole purpose is to allow ministers to further interfere in the already independent, rigorous, peer reviewed process for narrow political reasons. The Australian Research Council already requires researchers to demonstrate the benefits and impacts of their research.

Senator FARUQI: by leave—I ask the Minister representing the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources to explain why the response to the order for the production of documents No. 1238 relating to live exports has not been provided.